


Nightmare #0

by sageness



Series: Dreaming the Mythic Age [10]
Category: Smallville
Genre: Canon - TV, M/M, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-04-21
Updated: 2004-04-21
Packaged: 2017-10-03 15:19:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sageness/pseuds/sageness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lex and Louis...talk.</p><p> </p><p>(This series is permanently unfinished.  Two more sections posted for WIP amnesty are <a href="http://sageness.livejournal.com/897787.html">here</a>, if anyone's curious.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nightmare #0

"No!!!" Lex screamed, suddenly aware of Louis' face staring at him.

Louis watched him react, and his slow cackle grew shrill in the close room.

"I killed you!" Lex shouted, then clenched his fists tightly as the world around him reeled.

"You only thought you killed me, Lex," Louis said patiently.

"No! I killed you! With the machete! Right before the fisherman...." He trailed off, panting for breath.

"Don't you just hate it when you can't tell whether or not you're dreaming?"

"I --"

Louis didn't let him answer. "It does suck to be delusional."

"I killed you. There was blood everywhere," Lex answered quietly, doubt quartering his voice.

Louis smiled slyly and batted his eyelashes. "Still here, guy."

"Then, why are you inside the mirror? Explain how that's possible."

"Because you want me to be dead _that_ much; and I have to tell you, after three months alone together on our little island, that hurts me, Lex. Deeply."

"You're unbelievable," he snapped, noticing with delayed horror that he was quoting the beginning, middle, and end of a thousand arguments with his father.

Louis gazed at him from the mirror, his eyes large and wounded. "I trusted you."

"What the hell are you talking about?" This didn't make sense. Louis wasn't real. Lex knew he wasn't real. But what the hell _was_ now? Everything around him was so dim, but also so bright. He had to be high, but why was he high? Why wasn't he home?

"We had plans, man. We were going to build a cabana together. You promised me real bamboo plumbing!"

"You're not real!"

"Yes, I am." Louis laughed at him. "You're the one who can't tell the difference between dream and reality."

Lex rubbed his head. "This isn't...possible." Unless it was. He'd been rescued...right? What if this were a really bad movie, and the last three months were like Dorothy in fucking Oz? What if he'd never left the island?

"You're so lame, Lex. When did you turn into such a pussy?"

"Shut up, you prick." Or what if he had left the island, but had been locked up? What if he'd never made it home at all?

"Oh, now we're back to that again. You realize you sound like you're eight years old, right?"

"You don't exist, so get the _hell_ out of my head!" Or, fuck. What if this were hell? What if Mom's priest had been right all along? ...No, way too farfetched.

Louis interrupted again. "Am I in your head or in your room? Which do you think?"

"Get the hell out!" He couldn't think. How could he make sense of anything with all this goddamned yelling?

"So _weak_, Lex. Did Daddy do that? Did you let him beat you down again?" he mocked. "Or was it Helen? I can't believe you didn't have the nerve to kill her yourself. Loose ends, Lex! You can't leave loose ends hanging! Didn't the old bastard teach you anything? Kill first, _then_ dump the body. It doesn't _work_ the other way around."

"I'm not listening to you!" Except that if Louis knew about Helen, then what the _hell_? That happened after his return to Smallville, hadn't it? Lex's mind drifted to the night they'd spent fucking before taking the plane the next morning. The second plane. The one Louis shouldn't know about. And Helen, all eyes and lips. Their fucking angry and frantic...twisting the sheets off the bed, knocking the glass of water to the floor, the wet spread of it seeping into the carpet. Lex knew. He knew it the moment they lied through their teeth that it was reunion, that it was anything more than a fevered, late-summer screw. As if love had a place in their sweaty, desperate isolation. And maybe it was relief. Or a shred of resignation...except for the rage. The rage in which he fucked her. The rage in which she squeezed him, so tight, until they collapsed together in exhaustion. And him, watching, prowling the room, unable to sleep on a mattress after months on the sand.

Or, simply unwilling to drift off in the same room with her.

The bitch, she was too much like him. God, please let her be dead. Eaten by sharks. But not Metropolis Sharks. Fucking whore. He had no doubt that she'd do a whole team of athletes, and some of them were extremely fuckable...not fuckable like Clark, but --

"No, of course you're not listening to me," Louis cut in. "You're lying there all snug and soft, wound up in your desperate, hopeless dope dreams about that kid you're dying to bone. I can't believe you bought all that crap about family. I mean, _love_? Mama-bear's syrupy _bullshit_? Give me a fucking break."

Lex huffed and rolled on his side. Louis knew about Martha's visit. But if he were in his head, then all this --

"Aw, wook! Da widdle baby is pouting!"

"Shut up! I'm _sick_ of your shit, Louis!" There was no way he could tell what was real, Lex realized with a violent shiver. All he knew for sure was that _everything_ was wrong.

"That makes two of us, bro."

Lex felt Louis' eyes crawl over his body.

"It really pisses you off when I call you that, huh?" he asked snidely.

Lex slowly stretched his back from shoulders to hip, but didn't answer.

Louis laughed. "Oh, you poor, sad fuck. You couldn't even kill the people you really needed to get rid of."

"I'm not a murderer," he answered woodenly.

More laughter. "I'm sure that helps Nixon's mother rest easier in her grave."

"It was self-defense. He was going to kill Jonathan and take Clark," Lex said through gritted teeth.

"You and your stupid obsession with that kid. You think he tastes better than me? You couldn't get enough of me on the island."

"That was only a dream."

"Like your dreams of him? Like every time you beg him to let you suck him off? You're a pathetic fucking addict, Lex, and that's _all_ you are. You're just jonesing for another hit, and you're just busted enough in the head to mistake a cock for a needle."

Louis giggled at the stiffening line of Lex's back, then spat noisily. Lex's spine pulled into bow.

"Oh, no. Now, don't start that up again. You cry more than an entire fucking nursery full of infants, you know that, you little shit? All you want is your goddamned mommy --"

"No!" Lex was howling.

"Yes! Your god-damned-mom-mie! She should never have brought you into this world, Lex. _Never_!" Louis paused for a moment. "You know the doctors tried to force her to abort you, right?"

"Shut up!" Lex wailed.

Louis' tone hardened, but his words never stopped; his rant simply grew in volume. "Everyone knew her heart couldn't take the strain. She made an unfortunate choice, Lex. That's right, it wasn't your brother at all; it was _you_."

Louis broke off and gave a long, coarse laugh as the final bit of his Lionel impression sunk in. Lex's whole body shook with the force of his sobs.

In a gentle voice, Louis added, "She was your first kill, huh? But that's not what your prick of a father thinks, now is it?"

"No!!" Lex screamed. "No-no-no-no-no...." He writhed where he lay, chanting until he couldn't hear Louis' taunts anymore.

There were people nearby, but he couldn't figure out what they were doing or if he needed to care. Or when the marble floor had gotten so soft. Or why the light was so dim and tinted a weird shade of green. It made no sense whatsoever.

The world shivered. Louis was gone again. For now. Pushed outside the gauzy envelope that held him, that felt soft and cottony and reminded him somehow of fresh hay.

He couldn't figure out if he were awake or asleep. He never could, anymore.

Or if there was any meaningful difference.


End file.
